"Il contenuto delle defixiones nell'Occidente dell'Impero Romano" (titolo in spagnolo: "El contenido de las defixiones en el Occidente del Imperio Romano")

This work started in 2007 within the investigation research project ‘Espacios de la magia, superstición y poder en el Occidente del Imperio Romano’ . It focuses on Latin and bilingual defixiones also belonging to epichoric epigraphs (Oscan, Etruscan and Celtic) found in the pars Occidentalis. Its fundamental purpose is to analyse the contents of the tabellae from an historical and cultural viewpoint paying particular attention to the context they originate in. To this end, the inescapable starting point was to produce a catalogue compiling all the pieces published from 1904 (the year when Audollent’s work was published) to autumn 2012 . This catalogue comprises the provinces of the Occident Latin West except for Proconsularis Zeugitana and Byzacena, which originally were part of it though they have been excluded out of scientific integrity . On the other hand, given that the group is both plentiful and dispersed, a strict epigraphic criterion could not possibly be applied to the catalogue, which involves both the absence of any critical apparatus and the fact that only some of the pieces have been the subject of an autopsy. The tabellae are organized according to a geographic criterion, ordered by provinciae and location of the find (according to modern toponyms). The standard record file is divided into four main sections: heading, including general facts (such as place of find and housing, dating, measurements, type of medium and—whenever possible—inventory number), reading (taken from the edition underlined in the bibliography section, where an asterisk marks the author of the drawing which frequently illustrates the text), bibliography (following the Anglo-Saxon system) and comment (dealing with such matters as the formal features of the piece and epigraph—ordinatio, formulae, vulgarisms…—, the ritual manipulation of the tabella and —in some cases—the translation of the text). The study was conducted based on data yielded by the catalogue. It begins with a brief overview of the history of research into defixiones, deals with matters such as their definition, types of media used, writing of texts, ritual manipulation, contexts of the find, taxonomy, pantheon invoked and cartography of their use in the Roman Occident. These are all highly significant aspects which unquestionably underline the value of defixiones as historical sources.